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viewing 1 To 25 of 36 items
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UR 152LP
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Through X Scroll Era, Gabo Barranco, aka AAAA, conducts a rigorous overhaul of the aesthetics and statements of low-profile IDM, trance, and progressive-acid music typical of the early 2000s. In addition to this inherent and undeniable veneration for the era, the pieces on this album -- which originated from recordings and experimental exercises with gear and accidentally became an album -- serve also as a kind of retrospective inspection of Mexico City's suburbs (Lomas de Sotelo), with landscapes full of indiscriminate concrete, highways of two and three levels, factories, and parking lots that have supplanted nature with their own detached beauty. It is a sound memory, a specific melancholy that praises skate squads of the area, friends from the past, parties, and substances. It reviews the decline of rave culture but also its resilience and capacity for transformation. What AAAA offers with X Scroll Era is an almost multigenerational soundtrack, a memory that feels collective and recollects euphoria, ecstasy, and nostalgia. After several LPs and EPs and several years active in the dance and contemplative electronic music circuit, X Scroll Era is the first album by Gabo Barranco, aka AAAA, published on the Mexican label Umor Rex.
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UR 151LP
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Sonic Behavior by Driftmachine & Ammer is an album exploring the origins of sound, noise, and various music genres. Alongside lyrical declarations of love for noise, the album delves into sonic reflections on how beauty and emotion emerge from mundane vibrations in the air. For the first time, the analog sound researchers of Driftmachine (Andreas Gerth, Florian Zimmer) incorporate spoken language and noise into their sound research. They have collaborated with word and sound artist Andreas Ammer, renowned for his radio plays with Acid Pauli, aka Console, or FM Einheit. In "The Siren Is A Simple Device," the words are spoken by 81-year-old musician and poet legend Ted Milton (Blurt, Loopspool). Despite its simplicity and obvious ability to produce high volumes, the siren has led a marginal existence as a musical instrument. Yet, it is capable of evoking the most intense emotional states in the listener in the shortest possible time, like almost no other sound-producing mechanism. Sonic Behavior capitalizes on this fact. The familiar hypnotic sounds of Driftmachine are accompanied by a siren organ inspired by the revolutionary Russian futurist Arsenij Avranov and built by Andreas Ammer, while the lyrics talk about the simple physical reasons behind the sound chaos that has just been unleashed. The core of the album is "Song To Noise," an electro-acoustic mini-symphony about the beauties of noise and all its producers, which is based on a poem by the British poet Deryn Rees-Jones and spoken by the poet herself and Alexander Hacke (Einstürzende Neubauten, Hackedepicciotto). Driftmachine and Ammer develop a soundtrack that is as powerful as it is loud and danceable (which is why the LP also includes a textless version of the composition). "Sonic Sculpture" is the zenith of the work: a text/music track spoken by Ted Milton, which creates the possibility of a sound sculpture that encompasses the universe.
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UR 150LP
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Solo debut album by Camila de Laborde aka Opuntia, who is part of the project Camila Fuchs. Pink color vinyl, edition of 300 copies. Includes download code. Mercurio is the debut album by Opuntia, the solo project of Mexico City producer Camila de Laborde. After three albums with her duo/band, Camila Fuchs (ATP/Felte, etc.), Camila decides to embark on a new path of musical and interpersonal exploration with Opuntia as her new alias, and with the album Mercurio as a statement of metamorphosis and creative process. Broadly speaking, Mercurio is a direct impact of beautiful melodies, rhythms, and voices that traverse a leftfield electronic pop axis, sprinkled with elegant nods to experimental transitions. In Mercurio, you can sense the spaces, textures, and echoes, akin to a sort of retro sci-fi analogy. Bass hits or percussions carry a weight that bursts forth yet delicately dissolves instantly -- perhaps another analogy, akin to liquid metal. From softness to fury across the ten songs, Opuntia proposes an artistic reinvention in constant movement. Speeds and spaces change, but the narrative remains consistent from beginning to end -- finding a place, a resolved utopia. Mercurio is darkly joyful, with substantial doses of sophisticated pop.
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2LP
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UR 149LP
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After two years, Carl and Andreas present their second album, and once again, it opens up a wide associative space. The uncommon instrumentation is striking: a church organ, harpsichord, glass tubes, and more. Like their first album The Aporias of Futurism (UR 133LP, 2021), it is mysterious and dark. But it also carries a strong touch of rebellion and adrenaline, sometimes quite pointedly. The pieces are now shorter and feature intricate yet irresistible rhythms. The impact is immediate, yet it maintains a sense of solemnity and ceremony. Music for Unknown Rituals oscillates between primitive instincts and avant-garde intrigues. The process began in Döblitz, a small village on the Saale river in Germany, inside an old church that houses an organ built in 1886 by Johann Adolph Ibach. Carl and Andreas gained access and secluded themselves there for a few days, accompanied by the organ, an instrument made of glass tubes, and a set of modular synthesizers. After recording the basic tracks in Döblitz, the work continued in Munich and Berlin. Carl played electric guitars, harpsichord, bass, metallophone, xylophone, Indian harmonium, and various percussive instruments. Andreas added layers of electronic sounds, noises, and atmospheric drones. He also created percussive structures extracted and derived from recorded material of technical and industrial noises, which contrasted with the acoustic drums played by Carl. The antithetical approach continues with the dichotomous arrangement of the instruments, often panned hard left and right in the stereo field, creating an antiphonic communication. Some parts, especially the use of the electric guitar, evoke memories of the psychedelic sixties. However, this is anything but a nostalgic album -- these musical references are merely remnants, set pieces, and fragments used from a contemporary, post-modern, post-youth-cultural, and post-romantic perspective. Although Andreas and Carl continue on their chosen path of composing music with an almost literary narrative structure, this album is conceptually and formally completely different from their first effort.
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UR 148LP
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On this album, his third work published on Umor Rex, the French producer Alexandre Bazin takes what he started in Four Steps (Umor Rex 2022) to the maximum point. However, on Innervision, there is no longer that discreet flirtation towards the dance floor. Instead, the ten cuts that make up the album are influenced by musical research and the UK and Berlin electronic scene. Bazin's new proposal revolves around sound textures, saturations, feedback, autosampling, and cut and tuned sounds, allowing new melodic elements to emerge in the process, akin to a live act. While maintaining his minimalist exploration and obsession with melody and structure, Innervision undoubtedly marks a turning point in Bazin's discography. It is epic, compelling, euphoric, utterly enjoyable, and at times violently beautiful. The album was composed and mixed by Alexandre Bazin at Château Rouge, Paris, and mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll, New York. François Desmoulins played the acoustic drums on "Four Steps (Remix)". The artwork for the album was created by Daniel Castrejón in Mexico City.
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UR 078LP
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Eight years after its original release in 2015, and sold out upon release, Umor Rex finally presents a vinyl repress of Sirens, by Kara-Lis Coverdale and LXV. This new edition is limited to 500 copies and comes with revised artwork. Inspired by the link between seduction and violence, Sirens comprises a series of timbrally vast anamorphic pieces that poise the voice as a newly imagined tool of multiplicity. Processes of sample manipulation, signal processing, routing, and source design inform instrumental writing and performance in feedback until intertwined, flickering between states of conflict and consonance. Apparitions of the schizophrenic voice are at one moment fractured and cold and at the next full of warmth and vivaciousness, embodying velvet rituals of romanticism in the digital age. Ultimately, Sirens is music for ambitious dreamers: surreal sound portraits sound like the warmth of the world laid over an ice-cold virtual altar. LXV's vocal truncations and fleshy sound palettes depict the archivation of the breath and aural fantasies of the flesh which Coverdale sets amongst a vast and unconfined landscape of deeper and unknown force. Harmonically active and dynamic orchestrations underpin post-sacred tonalities while brooding pipe organs, sphinx flutes, and hailstorms of metallic percussion characterize uniquely disjointed discussions between disparate compositional ontologies. At times violent and at others serenely peaceful and seductive, these pieces, at their most powerful moments illuminate a felt space between cybernetic energy and the body. Composed and recorded by Kara-Lis Coverdale and David Sutton. Mastered by John Tejada. Cover photograph by Cody Cobb. Layout by Daniel Castrejón.
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UR 144CS
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The British producer Alex Smalley (aka Olan Mill) has been active for more than a decade building his signature through nature as the central theme across emotional journeys through beautiful ambient melodies. Moments at the Re-engage -- his first publication in Umor Rex -- was created for a performance in Thüringen, Germany. On the night, while the audience was floating in mineralized neon water, the sound was being diffused across submerged speakers. Multiple synthesizer layers were mixed with processed guitar. Later, additional acoustic sounds, field recordings, voice, and violin were added and processed. While the recordings were made in the German winter, the mixing took place on the Island of Koh Phangan in Thailand. Nature, plant medicine ceremonies, meditation, and jungle hikes somehow guided the sound-arranging process. Moments at the Re-engage reach an experience when time and reality dissolve into a single point of complete sedation. Produced and mixed by Alex Smalley. Personnel: Maria Smalley - voice; Jane Wild - violin. Mastered by Porya Hatami. Artwork by Daniel Castrejón. Edition of 100.
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LP
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UR 147LP
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Marcos Díaz has been part of Buenos Aires underground for many years, being in projects like Bosques and making solo music under the pseudonym Entidad Animada (animated entity). Under this project, Marcos has explored sounds that involve a mix of feedback/distortion through synthesizers, guitars and drum machines that hint at the influence of Stereolab, Spacemen 3, and mid-nineties shoegaze. However, there are also ambient soundscapes with a slight rubbed of the ritualistic psychedelia of the Popol Vuh. The display of colors in his music comes together in the midst of a playful, relaxed and optimistic environment that is simultaneously melancholic. Because of the nature of those pieces, but also because in Entidad Animada there is also space for collage sounds that blend randomly with textures of a primitive analog sound, which inevitably causes a paradox between what is alive and what is inert. And it is because Entidad Animada is precisely that, a spectrum or a vision, a ghost. And these sounds are proof of his existence. Pruebas de existencia (proofs of existence) is a collection of recordings that Marcos has made in recent years and that Umor Rex have selected for this album, his first work on the label. A couple of these pieces were only released digitally, while the others have been on ltd cassette editions through Fuego Amigo Discos in Argentina. Pruebas de existencia is an Umor Rex compilation and remastered edition. Guitar, sampler, synthesizer, organ, bass, drums, and electronic beats, vocals, recording and mixing by Entidad Animada in Buenos Aires. Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studio, NY. Cover photography Natch Tablescape (1979) by Langdon Clay. Layout by Daniel Castrejón, Mexico City. Includes download code; edition of 300.
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UR 145LP
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Throughout his productive career, Carl Oesterhelt has proven to be an artist who finds it easy to move between musical genres and concepts. Much of his work has been within classical and chamber music, but he has also scored museum exhibitions and he is sometimes part of The Notwist crew as an angular figure on the Munich scene. In Umor Rex, the label has been lucky enough to publish an array of Oesterhelt's universes. In Eleven Pieces for Synthesizer (UR 121LP, 2019) you heard his kosmische side, where the connections with Harmonia or Klaus Schulze were amalgamated with ecclesiastical organ pieces and intense semi-automatic rhythms. A deeply melodic, fresh album. Pure syntax of the modern synthesizer. Further, in The Aporias of Futurism (UR 133LP, 2021), in collaboration with Andreas Gerth (Driftmachine, Tied & Tickled Trio), Oesterhelt showed what is perhaps his darkest side -- a work full of nuances within concrete music and midnight atmospheres. As deep and cerebral an album as it is surprising and catatonic. Yet, it seems that Carl Oesterhelt has another ace up his sleeve. Now he surprises his listeners with The Dualistic Principle, a fantastic album full of weird but charming electronic melodies, rhythms that push the body to movement, sometimes syncopated and abstract, others permanent and fluid. In this work, Oesterhelt invited Johan Simons to give voice to the lyrics. The Dualistic Principle is a sort of rendition of a philosophical review or a nostalgic memory of the glamorous years. There is also underlying humor in the post/space-pop/Munich-disc assortment. The Dualistic Principle is the score to an imaginary film of contemporary hedonism. All music and lyrics by Carl Oesterhelt. Voice by Johan Simons. Additional strings played by the Ensemble für synkretische Musik. Recorded in Munich and Bochum, Germany. Mastered by John Tejada in Sherman Oaks, USA. Artwork by Daniel Castrejón in Mexico City. Blue vinyl; includes download code.
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UR 141CS
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Mexican sound artist Concepción Huerta is also a skilled photographer and video artist, and all of these aptitudes come together in the kinematic elements of her musical thesis. Her narrative seems to be an uninterrupted communication with movement as an axis: it pauses and falls with cadence at some moments; it agitates in disturbance at some others. But one movement perpetually crosses the other, even if sometimes imperceptibly. Her sound work evokes displacements similar to what we could understand as a force of zero gravity. Taking this criterion as a backbone of her most recent work, the idea behind Harmonies from Betelgeuse focuses on the transmission of electricity between body and machine, between the organic and the inorganic. -- Strong loads of sound pulses move away from Earth's gravity through tape-manipulation. Betelgeuse is a star that belongs to the Orion constellation, but, since it has been expelled from its stellar association, it is considered a fugitive -- An exile. Harmonies from Betelgeuse is composed of eight pieces built as a whole, accompanying and destroying each other like theatrical parts of a cosmic tragedy. A beautiful analogy about impending extinction and exile. Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri. Photos by Mateo Barbuzzi. Design by Daniel Castrejón. Edition of 100.
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12"
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UR 139EP
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Umor Rex presents a new collaboration between two great exponents of contemporary music who have been part of the electronic and experimental avant-garde for the last three decades. On the one hand, there is Berlin-based musician, composer, and video artist Frank Bretschneider, recognized for precise sound placement, complex, interwoven rhythm structures, and his minimal, flowing approach. On the other hand, Giorgio Li Calzi, the Italian trumpeter, composer, producer, and performing director based in Turin, whose work is known for electronic/effects improvisation combined with the trumpet. The creation process of Zero Mambo started when Giorgio and Frank met in Chamois, the Italian Alps, in 2018. A year later, Bretschneider sent to a few drafts in the form of audio files, loops, and sequences, and Li Calzi used this material quasi as a framework to create new compositions on it. At that time, in the pandemic, with the unprecedented intervention in lives and rituals, the situation led to ideal conditions to reflect and produce music, a snapshot of the weird times. Li Calzi and Bretschneider offer in Zero Mambo a fascinating album between electronic and jazz. It is clear that it is elegant, clean, and minimal, but we have to say, Zero Mambo is also exuberant and cheerful. A fantastic Berlin-Turin music connection. 45rpm; die-cut sleeve; includes download code; edition of 300.
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UR 140CS
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On her second album (first one on Umor Rex), the Minsk born/Paris based artist Lina Filipovich continues her experiments on deconstruction and re-appropriation of classical pieces. BFHC includes seven electronic interpretations of the works of Baroque composers such as Bach, Handel, Frescobaldi, Carleton, and Couperin. Inspired by memories of her experience of interpreting Bach's pieces in early childhood, Filipovich explores the desire to push the limits of performing classical music in the traditional way. Her baroque compositions are manipulated, modified, transformed into loops, cut, slowed down and recycled like any content could be, becoming a raw material for new compositions accompanied by electronic sequences, rhythms and basslines. Through the recycling, sampling and reassembly, Lina creates new listening experiences. And if BFHC can be interpreted as a tribute to baroque music, it can also be understood as a call to action to the work of contemporary artists like Oval, and to all the boom of clicks and cuts at the beginning of this millennium. Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri. Artwork by Daniel Castrejón. Edition of 100.
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LP
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UR 137LP
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Yamila reveals her most intimate catharsis in Visions, an album that brings together and provokes the hallucinatory powers of music. Like an ancient herald, she announces the profound feminine mystique while crossing epic melodies full of pleasure and pain. This album is a journey that prodigiously unites baroque accents, Spanish folklore -- such as flamenco -- and contemporary electronic music. Her voice and music -- sometimes torn and others buoyant -- could resemble the score for a biblical passage (ie visions of the Apocalypse), for they are overflowing with physical ecstasy and sounds that one can touch. Visions is composed of different forms and rhythms. Pieces like "Visions V" evolve intensely with sharp and systematized hits -- powerful layers that bring us closer to Alessando Cortini's Forse era. "Visions II", for its part, shares intensity and power with flamenco ritual patterns, as if it were an old Andalusian scene dripping with oscillations and electric shocks. Yet there are luminous vocal pieces such as "Visions I" (featuring Rafael Anton Irisarri), inspired by Manuel de Falla's Suite Española composed in 1922. Here, an aural chiaroscuro with beautiful voices and choirs is deeply fused with daring drones. And it is in the ensemble of moments of Visions where Yamila's conceptual axis is rendered solid. Pain and glory, lacerating religiosity, feminism cauterized by power, and hallucinations as a source (or pretext/tool) to be heard. Yamila exhibits a profuse aesthetic with her music that calls for a look at the far-past with romanticism and nostalgia. Visions is radiant, intense. A unique album. All songs written and performed by Yamila Ríos (Spain), except "Visions I", which features Rafael Anton Irisarri. Recorded between the Swedish winter and the Belgian countryside. Additional musicians: Simbad - guitar; Vera Cavallin - harp. Mastered by Rafael Anton Irisarri at Black Knoll Studio, New York. Photos by Virginia Rota in Madrid. Design by Daniel Castrejón in Mexico City. Transparent blue vinyl; gatefold sleeve; edition of 500.
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UR 135CS
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Stonewalling offers a collection of electroacoustic pieces taking as input the Mexican vernacular music from the golden age of Mexican cinema of the first part of the 20th century. In those films, music was used as communication due their poor verbal communication-skills. This is an album about communication, about the impossibility to do so to resolve conflicts. In the technical side, some of the sources used as layering in the tracks come from radio frequencies taken from explorations into the software-defined radio universe, mixed with microphone feedbacks, oscillators, and random textures with field-recordings. In the melodic/harmonic structures of the tracks, the main instrument used is a classical guitar with hyper-processed chords using DSP tools. Stonewalling, in some way, follows to 444 (Umor Rex, 2019), serving as a Morse's follow-up into the Mexican vernacular music expeditions. Produced by Alejandro Morse aka Edgar Medina in León, México. Mastered by Edgar Medina. Photos and design by Daniel Castrejón. Includes download code; edition of 100.
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UR 136CS
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These two pieces, recorded in sessions in Ghent, Belgium and Hamburg, Germany, represent the first musical collaboration between long-time friends U. Schütte (half of the German duo Phantom Horse, with several releases on Umor Rex) and G. Steenkiste (aka Hellvete). In this work, two specific traditions of the avant-garde of modern electronic music of the meet elegantly: the systematic, evolutionary and minimal construction of harmonic and solemn forms, with the patience and aesthetics of long durations -- where small changes take time but are always punctual and precise. U. Schütte & G. Steenkiste built a beautiful meeting between electric and acoustic music, basically carried out with a harmonium, a shruti box and modular synthesizers. Beauty is in the details and what Schütte and Steenkiste do here is to cover two long landscapes with well-consolidated details that invite contemplation and moments of extreme sensory relaxation. You have to give yourself a space to listen and see-through sound, and these two long pieces are a rare and perfect opportunity to do so. Recorded by G. Steenkiste and U. Schütte in December 2020 in Sint-Denijs and Hamburg. Mastered by Edgar Medina. Photos and design by Daniel Castrejón. Includes download code; edition of 100.
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2LP
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UR 133LP
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This double album is a new collaboration between long-time Umor Rex artists Andreas Gerth (one half of Driftmachine) and Carl Oesterhelt (11 Pieces for Synthesizer). Both developed their shared musical cosmos during their time with the now defunct Tied +Tickled Trio. Oesterhelt is also known for his solo compositions for orchestras and for collaborations with Johannes Enders and Hans-Joachim Irmler of Faust. As futurism seems inherent to electronic music, the backward-looking view is alien to its nature -- consequently, a dialectical struggle between these principles is rarely expressed with the means of electronics. Especially today, its essence as a medium of progress stands in opposition to a skeptical position. The Aporias Of Futurism seeks to define a critical location, that stands in opposition to the postmodern concept of interpretation, deconstruction and reformulation and the belief in progress that goes with it. The working method for the album Andreas and Carl followed was the usual musique-concrète-technique -- cut/assemble/edit/process pre-recorded sounds -- but instead of deconstructing the concrete noises into an abstract sound entity, they followed a different path: the organic interweaving of orchestral structures with the electronically processed noise layers into a composition in the sense of classical modernism at the beginning of the 20th century. Carl started with sketches recorded via a broken CD player, processed through a ring modulator, which sounded like old electronic music from the 1950s. To interact with these fragments Andreas recorded and processed a plethora of everyday noises, atmospheres, tonal fragments from the modular, industrial and shortwave radio noise, percussion in the form of door slamming, falling metal sheets, ball tracks, and so on. So, while they still played within the futuristic discipline, the reference to the past is actually unmistakable. One can hear it in the tonality of the contrasting orchestral passages, in the sound character of the processed samples and the sonic electronic layers. Free associations of concepts, books and authors from a wide period of time, such as Milton's Paradise Lost, William Blake, Robert Graves, ancient Rome, as well as Borges and Juan Rulfo. This flood of images is also incorporated on the album cover as a "free interpretation" of cultural objects and their relations in time. The overarching motif of a skeptical rejection of the idea of Futurism is illustrated by a quote from Emile M. Cioran, the writer who most closely embodies the common spirit of the work presented here. Gatefold sleeve; includes download code; edition of 300.
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12"
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UR 138EP
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Paris-based producer Alexandre Bazin returns to Umor Rex with another side to his music approach. If in Full Moon (2016) he explored the analog electronic music merged with classical minimalism, in this new work, Bazin dives into totally rhythmic terrains while maintaining his devotion to electronic exploration and acoustic drums. Four Steps even rubs shoulders without discretion with techno music and the dancefloor, and retains his refined obsession with melody and structure. In these pieces, Bazin lends space to electronic soundscapes, experimentation, and computer programming, everything derived from precise compositions. With melodies created with Buchla Music Easel, EMS Synthi, among other instruments, Four Steps -- through the drone and ambient music -- crosses roads with elegant and infinite techno loops. The album is a four-track EP released in vinyl 12" in 45 rpm, finely mastered by John Tejada with a focal point in harmonics and dimension, offering an exquisite hi-fidelity experience even for the digital lossless audience. Alexandre Bazin has been a member of the France GRM (Groupe de Recherches Musicales) since 2005. Composed and mixed by Alexandre Bazin at Château Rouge. Drums in "Four Steps III" by François Desmoulins. Mastered by John Tejada in Sherman Oaks. Artwork and photos by Daniel Castrejón in Mexico City. Die-cut sleeve; 45rpm; includes download code; edition of 300.
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UR 131LP
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Gudrun Gut and Mabe Fratti have worked together on a powerful hybrid album, where taut rhythms fuse with haunted vocal melodies and spoken word, and field recordings meld with extended ambient pieces. As part of Umor Rex's 15th anniversary, the label presents an album that builds a dialogue between two lands and two unique artists. Mexico is the origin and conceptual residence of our label, while Germany is where the label produces and manufacture our records. The intertwining imaginations belong to German producer Gudrun Gut (Malaria!) -- a notable figure of the subculture and the German music scene since the early '80s, and also a founder of Monika Enterprise and recipient of the "Listen to Berlin" Award in 2019 -- and singer, multi-instrumentalist and composer Mabe Fratti (originally from Guatemala, now based in Mexico City). The process started with Gudrun and Mabe having long distance conversations, asking about their whereabouts and discussing the weather. This might seem rather commonplace, but it works as a key thematic component for the entire album. The weather as the new great unknown, perceived through the optics of everyday life. Sound files were methodically exchanged, with Mabe exploring words and vocals, and Gudrun working with field recordings taken from each city. In the end, this joint musical venture would provide a healing effect for both artists during life in quarantine. "Aufregend", the opening track of the album, reflects upon a general lack of excitement in modern life. It wonders what the future might hold. Is it cold? Is it warm? Will it be the same? "Air Condition" is an eerie, dazzling collision of climates: the hazy warmth of Mexico City, the deep cold of Uckermark. The last track, which gives the album its name, is a long ambient piece composed of four parts: sound sculptures, field recordings of city life, news and weather forecasts, and private conversations about the climate. It's kind of a collaborative diary, obsessed with a single, all-encompassing subject. Produced and recorded by Gudrun Gut and Mabe Fratti between Berlin, Uckermark, Veracruz, and Mexico City. Mixed by Gudrun Gut at Stern Studio; mastered by John Tejada in Sherman Oaks, USA. Artwork and photos by Daniel Castrejón in Mexico City. Yellow vinyl; includes download code; edition of 500.
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UR 100LP
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2021 clear vinyl repress with new cover art; originally released in 2017. Post-minimalist American composer Rafael Anton Irisarri's Umor Rex debut. Inspired by a troubled socio-political climate, buried melodies punch their way through a bleak cover of noisy drones, periodically veering into some of Irisarri's most eerily pertinent music to date. One of Rafael Anton Irisarri's most thematically and sonically cohesive records to date The Shameless Years came together in a relatively short burst of creativity starting at the end of 2016. Rediscovering some relatively older tools -- namely Native Instruments' Reaktor, Absynth, and Kontakt software -- Irisarri combined them with his collection of guitars, pedals, amps, and analogue processing gear, turning his Black Knoll Studio north of NYC into a powerful writing tool. Completed quickly by Irisarri's standards, let alone during a period of social upheaval in American society, the record faces down several key personal themes. Two tracks were completely remotely between Irisarri in New York and Umor Rex veteran Siavash Amini from his home in Tehran, Iran. This music came together at the peak of all the anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant rhetoric happening in the USA, not to mention the banning of Iranians from entering the country, explains Irisarri. The diptych with Amini, "Karma Krama" and "The Faithless", seems bathed in additional waves of sorrow and dread. The wash of symphonic storm clouds of synth drones and processed notes on the latter gradually appears and disappears over the course of thirteen mournful minutes. "Rh Negative" marches gigantic guitars through towering valleys of scarred ambient noise dealing with Irisarri's own heritage, many of his ancestors having come to America to escape poverty and oppression. The refusal of modern America to extend similar sanctuary to refugees escaping turmoil weighs heavily on the composer. Elsewhere an emotional onslaught of notes buried in mounds of greyscale noise on "Sky Burial" aims to deal with Irisarri's very own mortality -- something he was recently confronted with following health scares, an accident, and a near-death experience in 2016. Pushing 40 as this album was being made, the composer is constantly aware that he's already outlived his own father, who died at the age of 32. Facing down both intolerance and the void, the epic soundscapes of The Shameless Years are a vast cry of emotion from Irisarri. Mastered by James Plotkin. Includes download code.
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UR 130LP
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Punctual like a Swiss watch, Driftmachine presents a new album that once again astounds and delights. Spume & Recollection is the sixth Umor Rex album by the Berlin duo. Regarding Nocturnes (2014), their debut album, Umor Rex described their sound as precise and symmetrical, identical concrete blocks mounted and articulated in a random order. Their already obsessive style continued to evolve with their third record, Colliding Contours (2016), now pushing further into abstract dub, ultra-tense grooves, and even more kinetic loops, moving further away from conventional musical structures. Between these two albums they released the remarkable Eis Heauton (HG 1601LP, 2015), a kind of hypnotic experiment informed by shadowy atmospheres, chance, and an intuitive dialogue with their musical machines. A similar map was explored with Shunter (UR 113LP, 2018), a superb secret meeting between avant-garde phantasmagoria and concrete experimentation. Radiations (2017) offered B-sides and bonus tracks, in addition to collaborations with Shackleton and The Sight Below, a kind of preamble that united Driftmachine's different expressions and leanings. When Andreas Gerth and Florian Zimmer come up with new material, one listens with high expectation. Looking back on their discography, one could safely anticipate a high-quality album densely layered with their familiar leitmotifs. Yet, Spume & Recollection takes you by surprise and finds a new way to transfix. Fresh methods and ideas are introduced to their dynamics and formula. You can still expect a healthy dose of kosmische, a dominant feature in Driftmachine's DNA; but this is now entwined with novel materials, semi-material patterns of alien code stretching over exhilaratingly tense and detailed grooves, clouds of gas shifting on top of deep dub architecture and blocking out the sun for prismatic effect. Even more of a surprise is the immediate, streamlined nature of these tracks, making Spume & Recollection their most accessible record and, perhaps, the most addictive (and this without sacrificing the essential mystery and strangeness at the core of Driftmachine's sound). Umor Rex have previously described their work as post-industrial-dub; right now, it could be called hypno-music for man and machine to dance and dream together. Spume & Recollection takes this concept as far as it can go without breaking, and finds some strange new feelings, and weirdly danceable grooves, to shed some light on this dark and dazzling ride. Mastered by John Tejada. Artwork and photos by Daniel Castrejón. Violet vinyl; includes download code; edition of 300.
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UR 127CS
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Maatsethe's solo output is all about ambient and sound collage. Loads of processed guitars and samples meander between walls of sound, intimate harmonies and a kind of melancholic cinematic landscape. Stoic basslines are surrounded by soft and gentle spheres. A bit of post-rock feel, every now and then, always wrapped up in a meditative monotony, slightly interrupted by small epic narratives to gaze up. Maatsethe (Matthias Neuefeind, Berlin) curates the KeplarRev series with vinyl reissues of essential electronic albums from the '90s and '00s, he plays in the band Fonoda and is part of the project Washer, Zimmer & the Guitar People. Tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 6 composed by Maatsethe Tracks 5, 7 composed by Fonoda. All tracks recorded by Maatsethe. Mastering by Edgar Medina. Artwork by Daniel Castrejón. Includes download code; edition of 100.
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UR 128CS
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Shapes is the solo project by Niklas Dommaschk, one half of Phantom Horse. As one half of Phantom Horse, his long-serving electronic duo with Ulf Schütte, Dommaschk co-produces beautifully muted, kraut-inspired jams that seem to soundtrack fictitious TV ads for wondrous imaginary household appliances, e.g. a calmly efficient, if slightly unsettling kitchen robot with an integrated lava lamp feature. In contrast, Shapes cuts tracks down to size -- nothing here is longer than five-and-a-half minutes. Also, Dommaschk has turned up the treble, the prominence of the higher frequency spectrum adding bite and menace to these deceptively simple synth polyrhythms. Whereas opening track "Benzin" (German for "Petrol") manages to conjure the paradoxical image of something or someone meandering with urgency, "Einzeller" (German for "single-celled organism") channels a John Carpenter-style pulse, complete with horror sound effects. "Interference" is a truly effective representation of the term, with piercing, but quiet tinnitus frequencies set above a beat as sparse as it is crunchy. "Two Stones", by contrast, offers a kind of robotic wistfulness whereas closing piece "Energies Of The Mind" fizzes out like a jumble of toy keyboards attempting to score a science program -- and failing, but instead revealing some much grander emotional truth. This is the sound of breaking some kind of inner lockdown, of turning inwards and then projecting parts of murky inner shadows outward, as well-defined and sometimes lurid shapes, individually clear, but still in the process of becoming organized into a complete whole. The unfinished is what is most exciting. May the shapes never find their slot in the jigsaw puzzle. All songs by Niklas Dommaschk. Recorded between 2017 and 2020 in Berlin and Nijmegen. Mastering by Edgar Medina. Artwork by Daniel Castrejón. Includes download code; edition of 100.
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UR 129LP
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Mehr Null translates to "More Zero". The title of Phantom Horse's third record for Umor Rex could either be seen as a request (to the listener? to the sound engineer?) to expect or to do or to imagine less; or just as the description of a state. The Hamburg/Nijmegen based duo of Ulf Schuette and Niklas Dommaschk is indeed moving nearer to zero: the arrangements are less illuminated; there's a significant nod to JD Emmanuel's working-class vision of minimalism. Hitherto walking in the kraut tradition (but moving away more and more), Phantom Horse heads toward the synth swamps where the old-fashioned shamanic disco is not yet abandoned. From the light green melancholy of "Owl" to the unexpected playfulness of the title track, the duo has obviously worked hard on leaving things out. Still, there's light-footed magic like in "Common Magic", the background music for a comet rain coming into your world. You can find hints to the lower-key film scores by Tangerine Dream, but Phantom Horse's approach fits more into a factory building where sad robots are working their night shifts on a sea horse machine. It's the perfect soundtrack to the non-hungover day after. Pink, transparent vinyl; includes download code; edition of 300.
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UR 125CS
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Matthewdavid is a co-founder of the Los Angeles label Leaving Records, and a collaborator of Flying Lotus, Sun Araw, Julia Holter, Laraaji, Odd Nosdam, among others. Experimental Bliss is his first album on Umor Rex, two long pieces devoted to the bliss of experimental music creation. This is unconventional music, aiming to assist the listener in attaining a state of bliss or relaxation. It incorporates obvious artifacts of compressed noise and texture with harmonic tonal elements. The creative process is always evolving and changing, often relying on digital music software and hardware technology to process and re-sample collected "organic" sounds from analog or environmental sources. Side A, "Lo-Fi Bliss Music", was recorded and performed live at the Leaving Records modern new age night event, using dynamic compression experiments with a processed and looped Critter & Guitari pocket piano, and ocean sounds samples from a cassette. "Dynamic Rhythmicals" was recorded live at home, using digital marimba samples. Includes download code; edition of 100.
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UR 124CS
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Tropical Syndroms is the second album by Thé Déluge, aka Vincent Caylet, also known as Cankun (Not Not Fun, Hands in the Dark). Like his debut album Forest Structures (Umor Rex, 2017), this new installment is an amalgam of sounds generated through multiple devices and analog synthesizers, loops and layers creating an incredible mix of textures, sounds that can almost be touched. In Caylet's work, there is always a certain familiarity in the tones, there is an implicit nature present, an ancient ecosystem that evokes somewhat ghostly landscapes, intrinsically friendly, subtle and sweet, concrete and sharp. Tropical Syndroms is one piece lasting almost 38 minutes, a cinematic trip inspired by Asian films. One single piece with many different atmospheres, but with one unified idea leading to a melancholic statement. Includes download code; edition of 100.
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